US Army engineers tested temporary burial methods near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, underpinning an estimated capacity of 2,400 remains a day, the service said on 22 October 2026.
That calculation assumes an engineer company working continuously with eight bulldozers and four military excavators. It describes potential excavation and backfilling capacity, rather than a tally of bodies buried during the exercise.
“If we went to war tomorrow, we would be making this up as we went along,” Sergeant First Class Delbert Ruede, the 3rd Corps Sustainment Command’s senior fatality management noncommissioned officer, said in the Army release.
The training addressed circumstances in which forces cannot immediately evacuate their dead. Army Times reported that US air superiority during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had generally allowed rapid evacuation through military mortuary channels.
The Army said it had not carried out temporary battlefield interment on a large scale since the Korean War. Its stated aim was to preserve remains so specialists could later recover and identify them for return to families.
The latest tests formed Phase II of Operation Dragon Covenant, bringing together the 3rd Corps Sustainment Command, the 20th Engineer Brigade, preventive medicine teams and military chaplains.
Engineers discovered that existing instructions left too little room for their vehicles. A prescribed seven-foot passage between trenches was two feet too narrow for bulldozer tracks to pass without disturbing the burial area, the Army said.
Teams widened the trenches to 15 feet and retained nine feet of undisturbed ground between them. This allowed operators to move along the corridor and push soil inward without driving directly over the simulated remains.
Skeletal models and sealed water containers stood in for human remains. Operators tested how to cover them without crushing them, then dug them up to assess the results, according to the Army.
The service said D6 bulldozers prepared a trench accommodating 20 remains in an average of one hour and 15 minutes. Earlier exploratory work with standard backhoes had taken three hours for a trench accommodating 10.
That comparison supplied the basis for the larger capacity estimate. Clash Report, which covered the exercise on 29 October, distinguished the planning figure from the number of simulated remains actually used.
The exercise also examined religious support when fighting prevents individual graveside services. The Army said 130 religious support personnel participated, including representatives from airborne divisions and Special Forces units.
Chaplains consulted colleagues from less widely represented faith groups about consecrating burial sites before interment when individual religious backgrounds could not be established, the release said.
The Army said findings would inform revisions to its fatality management and religious support manuals, including changes to trench dimensions for modern engineering vehicles.
Phase III is planned for spring 2027. The Army said it would test the wider process in daylight and blackout conditions, incorporating security teams, medical facilities and a mortuary affairs collection point.
